The Importance of Background Screening Potential Tenants

Choosing the wrong tenant can lead to lost income, litigation costs and damage to your property. Conducting a background check on prospective tenants is a wise way to ensure a mutually successful experience for you and the applicant, and it’s an effective risk management tool. Although background checks do present some costs, taking on a tenant without having performed this screening carries significant risk and may cost you a lot more money in the long run.

Why Prescreen?

If applicants have criminal records, chances are they won’t disclose this information. Therefore, consider these advantages of pre-screening:

Discourages applicants from hiding a criminal background or falsifying their credentials

Eliminates any uncertainties about applicants

Encourages honesty while going through the leasing process

Extent of Background Checks

At a minimum, it’s advisable to review an applicant’s criminal history, as it may be a factor to consider when allowing him or her to become a tenant. Searches for criminal records might include federal, state and county records.

Beyond the basic criminal background check, take a risk-focused approach to determining additional levels of screening, which might include identity verification, employment verification and professional license verification.

Credit Check

An additional level of verification that’s essential for a background screening of a potential tenant is a credit check. This can provide additional verification of social security and employment information, and can reveal crucial details about the applicant’s ability to make payments responsibly.

Rental Applications

The background check will be more efficient, more valuable and less costly if the application contains certain elements. For example, it’s crucial that applications should include a statement that all information is accurate and that any untruthfulness or omissions are legal grounds for termination of the lease. A standardized format that consistently collects all necessary information will also speed the background screening process. Some other helpful elements include:

To simplify the task, you may find it helpful to outsource the process to a background screening service provider. For many screening tasks, such as criminal background checks, outside providers can be faster and more thorough. It’s important that when selecting a provider, you consider its financial statements and health, hiring and employment processes, identity theft safeguards and, of course, its service offerings.

One way to streamline the process is to use an online application that requires certain fields necessary for the screening to be completed. The completed fields can be linked directly to the screening provider’s website, which will extract the necessary information for the background check. When a need for revision arises, the form can be easily modified.

Legal Duties

It’s important to note you have several obligations to the applicant under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA):

Any applicant on whom an institution performs a background screen must give his or her written authorization to conduct the report

If you ultimately deny the application, you must provide notification through pre-adverse action and final adverse action notification letters

Anthony Way is a Senior Vice President, Practice Leader at Assurance who oversees the manufacturing, public entity and education industries. With over 20 years of experience, Anthony’s primary responsibility to his clients is to provide excellent customer service and equip them with the research and information necessary to make the most informed decisions regarding their insurance and risk management program. Anthony graduated from Knox College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. He also earned his Property & Casualty and Life & Health Producer licenses as well as his Associate in Risk Management (ARM) designation.

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